


An Ace Up an Angel's Sleeve

by Freya_Kendra



Series: The Dime Novel Rescue [2]
Category: Bonanza
Genre: Angst, Drama, Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-03
Updated: 2013-07-03
Packaged: 2017-12-17 13:47:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/868247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Freya_Kendra/pseuds/Freya_Kendra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Series: Wounded, trapped in the desert and surrounded by a renegade band of Bannocks, Paiutes and Shoshones, Adam and Joe prepare for death, unaware of the unfolding chain of tiny miracles that is setting them up for an improbable, last-minute rescue.</p><p>This story: Adam picks up where Joe leaves off, sharing his thoughts on what led them to such a helpless situation and the improbability of the just-in-time appearance of Ben and Hoss, comparing it to “a scene from a dime novel, a rescue perfectly orchestrated to provide for the requisite happy ending.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Ace Up an Angel's Sleeve

**An Ace up an Angel’s Sleeve**

**XxXxX**

**_Adam_ **

Awestruck. That’s the only word I can think of, the only one sufficient to describe what I feel as my father— _my father!_ —touches my shoulder…my arm. He’s on his knees beside us, Joe and me, one hand grasping each of us.

A moment ago, I knew the next touch I could expect would bring pain with it, probably agony, and, eventually, death. But I find this instead. Not a renegade Indian’s cruelty, but my own father’s gentleness.

The renegades had taunted Joe and me throughout the long night, a night sure to be our last here on this Earth. They’d played their drums and chanted those unnerving, disturbing calls to the great spirits that had left us at their mercy.

Mercy? No. There would be no mercy. We were dead from the moment we’d taken to climbing these rocks. We found shelter here for a time, for a night of despair and pain…and aching revelations. But a night of shelter in the rocks could not save us. Nothing could save us. And yet…my father has. My father, Hoss and the cavalry men standing before us now…they have all saved us.

It seems impossible. It _is_ impossible, a scene from a dime novel, a rescue perfectly orchestrated to provide for the requisite happy ending. It is a gift, a dream made real, a dream my young brother couldn’t bear to let go despite my warnings that holding to it too strongly would only make things harder when the time came for us to face an end that seemed inevitable. I told him to accept the truth. I told him….

I told him to give up hope.

Maybe not directly. Maybe not in so many words, but…the effect was the same. I told him to accept that it was considerably less than likely we’d be leaving here alive.

Before Joe was hit, there might have been a chance—a small chance…a chance nonetheless. But after…. Joe’s gun was gone, dropped to the desert floor when he fell. Even if he’d still had it, our bullets would be gone soon enough. _And_ our strength.

So I’d told my brother, the young brother I’ve watched over since his birth, a young man I still see, I can’t _help_ but see as my responsibility, my charge, a brother worth protecting, worth giving my own life to protect…I’d told him the best thing either of us could do—the practical thing—was to prepare ourselves…by making peace with God.

XxXxX

I sat on that hard rock, on the edge of a world that seemed to be crumbling away from us, bit by bit, intent on pulling us into the abyss…. I sat there, on the edge of life itself, with my good leg curled up beside me and my bad leg stretched out before me, and Joe…Joe was lying so still beneath my hand, the skin of his back warm, his blood seeping into the balled up remnants of my shirt.

I’d cast away the arrow I’d torn out of him, sickened by the thick, ugly wound it had left beneath Joe’s shoulder blade. Arrowheads are cruel things. Their cuts could be small—relatively—going in, but are often horrific coming out; and my efforts at surgery here in this godforsaken desert with no fire, no thread for stitches, no…anything…had served my brother poorly. I came to know a touch of what he must have felt, digging that first arrow out of my leg—but a touch, only. I would give anything to have traded wounds

 Covered with Joe’s blood, I couldn’t look at that arrow for even a minute longer. So I’d thrown it away from me, down to the desert floor. That had been…a mistake. Not my first; maybe not even my last. It was a signal to the Indians below us that they’d already won. We were both injured; all they need do was wait for our bullets or our strength to run out.

When a new arrow clattered against the rock beside me, I bent myself over my brother, as though by allowing the next one to hit me I could save him…even when I knew nothing could save either of us…nothing short of an act of God. But the next arrow didn’t strike me. Instead, it embedded itself into a niche of hard sand.

And then…a startled cry called out from where I’d thrown Joe’s arrow. There was a shout in reply, and then another. And finally…laughter. And that was it. They wasted no more arrows. They knew Joe and I were already theirs.

And I knew it, too. As much as I tried to pretend…to hope…even pray…I knew they had us.

I eased Joe over onto his back, careful to keep my shirt in place on his wound. Although I was gentle, the rocky ground was not. Joe stirred, coming groggily back to consciousness.

“Adam?” He looked up at me. “Are they…?” He closed his eyes tight, pulling his lower lip between his teeth, clearly fighting the pain I knew he must be feeling.

I nodded, unconcerned whether he saw the gesture. _Yes, they’re still down there. They’re just_ …. “Waiting.”

“Waiting?” He looked at me again. “For what?”

No longer able to meet his gaze, I turned away, holding my tongue.

“Adam?”

He deserved to know. I couldn’t shield him from this reality any more than I could from the reality of his mother’s death all those years ago. He’d been a child then, but it would have done him no good for us to allow him to watch over her, waiting for her to open her eyes again. He’s a man now. Playing make-believe wasn’t going to help either one of us.

“For us to weaken.” I let him see the unspoken words in my eyes before turning my attention to the western sky. The sun was starting to dip below the horizon; its dimming light spread out in a wash of colors I would challenge any artist to match. “They’ll probably leave us be for tonight.”

He understood. I know he did. I had seen that in him before I’d looked away. Whether or not he saw it in himself, I can’t say for sure. If he did, he hid it well. “That’s good…right?” He was actually smiling, looking hopeful and…eager for me to justify that hope.

I closed my eyes, shaking my head slowly, sadly. “They’ll come for us at dawn.”

“We’ll be ready for them.” Joe was still smiling. He took a quick breath, one that pulled at that smile but would not remove it. “A little sleep…,” his eyelids slipped shut, “and we’ll be ready. We have…the advantage.”

“No, Joe. We don’t.”

He came fully awake in an instant, his eyes gone from hopeful to stormy just as quickly. “Of course, we do,” he argued. “We have the high ground.” Leave it to Little Joe, ever the fighter, even when it was a struggle for him to catch a full lung of air, and, with too little air, a struggle to speak. He paused, breathing hard. “We can pick them off…one by one…as they come up the—”

“We only have one gun.”

 _One?_ The word formed on his lips but never passed between them. He looked…confused.

“Yours,” I explained, “is gone.”

He closed his eyes once more. His chest rose, filling again—or trying to. “Bullets?”

“Five.”

“Pa,” he said softly, maybe even disbelievingly, but…hopefully. “Pa and Hoss will come.”

I took a long pull of air, grateful that I could. “By the time they realize…. It could be too late, Joe.”

“Then what, Adam?” he whispered. His eyes looked…lost…more lost than I’d ever seen them. “What do we do?”

I had guided him out of the woods before. But this time, it was different. So very different. How could I tell him? He was trusting in me to give him an answer, to help him see there was still a way out of this mess we’d stumbled into—or _ridden_ into—just because we’d taken an extra day in that new silver mining town they’re calling Austin.

One extra day out from under a saddle after that dusty cattle drive had been awfully appealing. It had been appealing enough to cause the four of us to draw straws to see who would stay and who would head home, where there was always more work to be done. What had made it especially appealing was that extra day in Austin involved nothing more laborious than waiting for a stage carrying a man who’d wanted to discuss Cartwright timber. But now….

That one, extra day hadn’t even resulted in a contract. It had simply delayed us getting home…and delivered us into the hands of renegades, a band of Paiutes, Shoshones and Bannocks who must have decided the Pyramid Lake War hadn’t ended to their liking.

And by delivering us into their hands, that extra day had delivered us right into the hands of God, for surely mere men could do nothing to help us now.

 _“It could be too late, Joe,”_ I’d told him.

It already was too late. Yet he was still asking me what we should do. I should know. I always knew what to do. I was the older brother, the one he could always look to for answers. This time, the only answer I had was the last one I could ever want to give him. “We prepare ourselves.”

“How? With what?”

“Prayer…I suppose.”

“Pray for Pa to come?”

“Yes. And….” I sighed, knowing better, but giving him that, nonetheless. “If that’s not enough, then…for your mother. And mine.”

XxXxX

Yet even when Joe had accepted the truth, he hadn’t. Not really. His heart was too full of the spirit of youth and an unhealthy dose of Cartwright stubbornness to allow for him to give up. He told me there was still room for hope; there was _always_ room for hope, as long as….

“Pa always says where there’s life there’s hope.” Even as Joe had said it, his life had been slipping away, spilling out from the hole in his back that had sealed the end for both of us. Even then he couldn’t give up hope. “If the horses kept heading west, they’d a’been bound to run into Pa and Hoss…or maybe even them soldiers.”

“Maybe,” I’d told him. But in my heart I knew better. _Don’t hope so much that you lose yourself in a dream._  It was just a dream, after all….

Or…it should have been. Pa and Hoss should have been halfway back to the Ponderosa by then. And those soldiers we’d encountered…. They had been on patrol from Fort Churchill. Cavalry men on patrol don’t tend to stay in one spot for long. They, too, should have been too far to reach. Joe had been counting on too much. His hopes had been misplaced, centered on impossible dreams.

I’d tried to warn him, to prepare him…to help him accept that this wasn’t a dime novel, that the cavalry doesn’t always make it time.

_Don’t hope so much that you lose yourself in a dream._

But I’d been wrong. I’d thought our incalculable odds posed too big a risk. I’d needed to be ready—to make my peace with God. More importantly, I’d needed for Joe to be ready. Because I knew I couldn’t protect him anymore. I couldn’t even stand up on my own. How could I hope to protect him?

But Little Joe had called God’s bluff, betting on impossible dreams. And his gamble had paid off. Pa was right here. Right… _here_ …like an ace that had been hiding up some unseen angel’s sleeve. Or….

I look into the depths of my father’s eyes for answers. "How?" I ask, my voice the rasp of sandpaper across splintered wood, the result of too little water, too much shouting, and a night spent waiting to die.

"We found your horses." Pa’s words mirror Joe’s dream. He lifts a canteen to my lips, spilling sweet moisture over my dry tongue, my parched throat. “Or rather, Corporal Rogers found them. He sent a couple of men to stop Hoss and me from heading home.”

For a fleeting moment, the water fuels my own dreams. I can almost believe a swirl of dust takes the shape of a woman standing at my father’s shoulder…a woman I recognize from a daguerreotype photograph…my mother.

“That’s enough for now, Adam.” Pa’s pulling the canteen away.

I don’t fight him. I want to tell him she’s there…but she’s not. Not anymore. _A dream_ , I tell myself. _A mirage_. I give my attention back to my father, watching as he tries to ease Joe’s thirst as he had mine. But Joe….

“He fell asleep again.” There’s surprise in my voice, enough to remind me of Joe’s surprise at hearing those Indian drums.

 _“Just for us?”_ He’d said it as though he’d believed the drums and the chanting marked a special celebration in our honor—rather than in honor of our defeat. That tone of surprise had given Joe and me a chance to laugh, to actually… _laugh_ …before his pain had overwhelmed him…and before my own laughter had turned to quiet sobs.

_“Just for us?”_

Joe’s surprise repeats in my thoughts, again and again, like another, smaller gift than the dream-turned-rescue. It prompts me to smile…until I notice the water dribbling from Joe’s chin to his neck, where it finally cascades to his chest. He’s not stirring, not even to welcome Pa’s gift of water. Just a moment ago, Joe had been awake enough to know—not just to hope, but to _know_ —Pa was coming. He’d been awake enough to hear me admit that I should have listened to him…to hear me promise to listen to him from here on out.

 _“Always?”_ he’d asked.

 _“Always,”_ I’d promised.

I expected him to fight to stay conscious after that, if only for this moment, this awe inspiring, thirst quenching rescue. But….

“He’ll be alright, Adam,” Pa assures me. For an instant I wonder how he could be so certain. Then I remember Joe’s recitation of our father’s own words. _Where there’s life, there’s hope_. And, this time, I accept them to be truthful.

“It’s a good thing Buck came up lame,” Pa says while I close my eyes, relishing the fresh moisture he’s given me, “or those troops might never have found us.” His voice falls across me like a blanket, full of the warmth and comfort I’ve longed for but dared not hope to find. He says more, but the words are meaningless. All that matters is the voice. I fall into it, revel in it, feel like a child again, a youth with hope in my heart…until....

Joe is gone. My side where he’d lain grows cold. I feel…. Exposed. Alone.

“Joe?” I call his name as I had near the end, after the night had already started waning…after Joe had been silent for too long and his back had stopped rising perceptibly with each labored breath. He’d been lying on his stomach then, beyond my reach. He should have stayed on his back, allowing the ground to keep pressure on his wound. But he’d been in so much pain! The hard ground pressing into the gaping hole I’d helped to put into him looked to be…excruciating. And whether or not the bleeding stopped…well, it had hardly seemed significant anymore.

“He should have left me,” I say aloud. “He could have…gotten away.” He _had_ been getting away. When those renegades had swarmed up behind us, Joe had kicked his heels into Cochise, and I’d kicked mine into Sport, and…for a moment, for an instant, I’d thought we could make it. I’d been so sure we could. It had to have been an amazing sight, the two of us flying across that desert. But…when I was hit, I fell back. I couldn’t keep up. And Joe…Joe was riding so fast, and so focused…. “He should have…kept going.”

“No, Adam,” Hoss answers. “He shouldn’t of. An’ you an’ I both know he wouldn’t.”

I open my eyes to see that Pa, too, is gone. But Hoss is here. And his eyes…those rich, blue eyes of his are as sure of his words as I am unsure of mine.

“Would _you_ have left _him_?” he asks.

I shake my head—or I try to, anyway, but the effort leaves me tired. “That’s…different.”

“No. It ain’t. You know it ain’t. Just because he’s youngest, don’t mean he worries any less about us than we do about him.”

“You should’ve seen him, Hoss.” I try to smile, but…at what? Joe played the role of a hero, and heroes only truly win in dime novels. Real life tends to be far more…tragic. “He practically dragged me up into these rocks. And then he…he fought like…an army.” I chuckle, but the sound falls flat. “Like an entire army. He covered three sides to my one. It was…the only one I could reach.”

I look into my brother’s caring blue eyes and see the pain etched there. He’s hiding something. I know he is. And I know _what_ he’s hiding. But I don’t want to know. I lower my gaze, noticing Joe’s gun tucked into his belt. He must have found it at the base of this rocky hill, where it had fallen when Joe had…fallen.

“You’d have been… _proud_ of him, Hoss.”

“I already am.” He’s serious with his words. Deadly serious. “Always have been. Of both of you.”

I ignore the implication, reaching absently for my own gun. It still sits in my lap, and still holds the five bullets I’d hoped to put into the first five renegades to reach us.

“Every time he stopped to reload,” I go on, pretending I can’t see what I can, “I held my breath, afraid he’d been hit. There wasn’t anything I could do except to let him keep at it. He kept firing. And firing. And then…. Nothing. When I finally turned to see….”

I’m crying now. It’s ridiculous to cry, isn’t it? We’ve been rescued, after all, a perfect ending for an imperfect novel, fraught with plot holes and…exactly as Joe would write it, were he a writer. But I can’t help thinking that perhaps this last minute rescue has been too late for Joe. And I can’t help crying.

And, unlike Joe, Hoss is not turning away to let me shed my tears in private. His pride has been misplaced in me. Little Joe saved _me_. And I, his older brother, the one responsible for his care, have failed to save him.

“He’s dead,” my throat compresses on the word. “Isn’t he?”

Hoss pulls down his brows and shakes his head slowly. He’s not surprised by my question. And that tells me…so much…. “He’s with the medic, Adam.” His voice is soft…gentle…but not soothing. There’s a hardness to it, an edge that suggests he’s run out of hope.

Even so, I find my useless tears already drying. “With the medic?” I ask, _hopefully_.

Hoss nods, looking puzzled by my reaction as a smile tries to tickle itself loose on my lips.

I’d thought Joe dead once before, but he’d opened his eyes, allowing me to give him the night’s final revelation, the one I couldn’t face death without speaking. _“Joe…listen, I…want you to know…I’m proud to be your brother.”_

 _“Me too.”_ Those were the only words Joe’d had in him then, but they had buoyed me, renewing my strength to face what was coming…almost as much as they’d seemed to buoy him, giving him the strength to crawl toward me, to join me where I sat—where I’m sitting now—with my back to a rock, watching for the sunrise…and the death it would bring. I’d drawn him up to lean against me, sparing him the unforgiving sting of the rock, and I’d held him there until…until I’d heard Pa’s voice…until this moment, as I feel the coldness of Joe’s absence.

 _“He’s with the medic, Adam.”_ Hoss’s words float through my mind, telling me something more than even Hoss has seen.

And now I look to Hoss, and my smile is as real as…as the feel of Hoss’s palm on my forehead.

He’s strong, that little brother of ours. And he’s already fooled me once. But he’s not fooling me this time.

“That means he’s still alive,” I say with more confidence—more hope—than I should feel.

When Hoss nods again, I close my eyes, take a deep pull of dry, desert air, and repeat the last words I’d said to Little Joe only moments before Pa’s hand had gripped my shoulder, the words Joe had first given me just a few hours ago. “Where there’s life, there’s hope.”

And then…I allow myself to drift into a dream filled with swirling sand, my mother’s smile, Marie’s whispered, “ _Adieu_ ”…and a treasure chest filled with dime novels, their covers awash in cavalry blue to boast of last-minute rescues and the requisite happy endings. I pick up the first book and open it, letting fall a single ace of hearts…the one from my own angel’s sleeve.

XxXxX

_end_

 


End file.
